Bravo to Meg Waite Clayton's articulate Op-Ed regarding society's double standard for male and female sexuality, and the Obama administration's consequent restriction of access to emergency contraception. As an adolescent medicine specialist, I have seen the punishing results of stigmatizing girls' sexual expression firsthand, having cared for 12- and 13-year-old mothers. Conversely, I have seen many patients who greatly benefited from using Plan B, the so-called morning-after pill.

Putting our collective heads in the sand will not stop young people from having sex. But nurturing and supporting their resourcefulness, resiliency and proactiveness can prevent a life-altering, unplanned event. Plan B should be available without restriction to all youths, regardless of gender or age.

Claudia Borzutzky

Los Angeles

The writer, a medical doctor, is an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at USC.

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Clayton asks, "Is there a word for a promiscuous boy that compares with 'slut'?"

There is such a word, one that's widely considered to be the masculine complement to the designation "slut." It's also a monosyllable, and it has three of the four letters that appear in "slut." Alas, that word is "stud."

As long as the boys themselves, men in general and, indeed, many of the girls who sleep with these guys think along these lines, the double standard that Clayton laments will continue to reign supreme.

Okay, right-wingers...let's go through this. You don't want sex education in the schools (where else are kids going to learn? No, they won't learn at home.), you don't want birth control, you don't want abortions, you don't want the morning-after pill, and you don't want unmarried pregnant teenagers. Do you all need to take sex education classes? I'm beginning to think so.

Here's a hint: neither storks nor angels brings unwanted children into this world. Teenagers do and will engage in sexual behavior - they're teenagers!

From this article:
OB-GYNs Are Confused By The Political Fight To Restrict Emergency Contraception

– Owen Montgomery, MD: “I would much rather have a 13- to 14-year-old girl who needs emergency contraception have access to it than come to my office with an unwanted pregnancy… In our clinics in the university, we see lots and lots of teenagers. And many of these young ladies have no access to good parental role models, and they need access to emergency contraception when they need access. And they can’t wait for permission from a judge, or someone else of authority

But you, RWers, don't want this, right? You want teenage mothers, apparently - or, let's say, clearly You want children who are raped to bear their rapists' children. And why? Is it 'God's will' that they have the children of their rapists or fathers or brothers or cousins?

It never made any sense to start with. If a young girl had an honest relationship with and access to a physician, she'd also probably have contraception, age be damned. They don't, so the unfettered need is there.

A federal judge ruled Friday that the government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. In his ruling, he also accused the federal government of “bad faith” in dealing with the requests to make the pill universally available.

The decision, on a fraught and politically controversial subject, comes after a decade-long fight over who should have access to the pill and under what circumstances. And it counteracts an unprecedented move by the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who in 2011 overruled a recommendation by the Food and Drug Administration to make the pill available for all ages without a prescription.

In a decision in a lawsuit filed by advocates, the judge, Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court, ruled that the government’s refusal to lift restrictions on access to the pill was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

Judge Korman ordered the F.D.A. to lift any age and sale restrictions on the pill, Plan B One-Step, and its generic versions, within 30 days.